


This darkness is the light

by lellabeth



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 18:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4030363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lellabeth/pseuds/lellabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I figure this is fate’s way of telling me it’s just not meant to be. Can you imagine the poor bastard who’d get stuck with me, Coulson? They’d hate me before the first year was out. I’m no prize.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> References to past child abuse. Not graphic, but there. Be safe.
> 
> Title from Beautiful Crime by Tamer.

Phil is 9 when his mark appears.

His friends have theirs in shades of peachy pink or cinnamon brown, light washes of color sitting pretty on their skin. There are flowers and elaborate patterns, curls of script wrapped around vines. They are delicate and beautiful. They are blessings.

Phil’s is stark white, outline made from raised bumps of flesh. His symbol is an arrow, angled across his chest so the sharp point is aiming right for his heart.

He doesn’t take his shirt off in front of anyone after that. He watches movies about soulmates meeting, pressing together marks the color of blossom, and he swears he can feel that tip digging into his chest.

Phil learns quickly that there are no marks like his. He reads through books in the public library, hands shaking as he scans the pages and finds nothing. When people ask about his mark, he tells them it’s nothing special, just an abstract blur of pink across his shoulder blade. They look at him sadly, and Phil wonders how they’d react if he told them the truth: that his mark is more of a scar, more of a curse.

He doesn’t tell anyone. He gets a tattoo of an out of focus pink rose across his left shoulder blade as soon as he’s legally old enough, and if tears leak from his eyes while it’s happening, then it’s just the pain of the gun pricking his skin.

He ignores reality so long that he almost accepts his lie as truth.

Almost.

Until he’s in medical one day, chasing down Barton, and he rips back a curtain to find the stark white lines that make up his mark - his actual mark - staring back at him, framed by the strong lines of Clint’s back.

**

Clint hears the choked inhale before anything else.

He tenses before he smells the crisp spice of Coulson’s cologne, but he barely has time to relax before he realizes his whole back is on show, before he realizes what Coulson must be seeing.

He feels sick to his stomach.

He turns to see Coulson white-faced and speechless, expression uncharacteristically open for anyone to read. Shock and something close enough to horror for Clint’s stomach to twist.

Clint knows it’s ugly and wrong, but he’d hoped that Coulson - Phil - was different. Different from boys laughing in a locker room, from women and men recoiling as soon as he takes his shirt off. He tells himself he’s used to it by now, that he knows well enough by now to keep it clothed and hidden away, like a dirty secret he can’t ever escape. Not when it’s etched right into his skin. He tells himself he doesn’t care. He tells himself these things, and still Phil’s expression is enough for Clint’s heart to crack right down the middle.

Clint has been in love with Coulson for years. He’s the only man Clint has ever trusted. He knows most of Clint’s secrets, things he has not told even Natasha. He knows more of Clint than anyone else on the face of the Earth, and Clint had hoped this would be just another thing that Phil would accept.

He was wrong.

He hadn’t even known he was hoping for something else, not until right now when it feels like a million stars are all burning out, right inside him. It feels as if he’s just been knocked out of orbit and now he’s spinning around in the emptiness, no anchor or hold to guide him. He looks at Phil’s clenched fists and blanched cheeks, and he feels a sense of shame so deep he’ll be stuck in the trenches of it forever.

But because he is Clint Barton, because he is more steel than skin, he lets none of that show. “Ugly, huh?”

“What?” Phil asks, almost absent-minded before he seems to actually focus on Clint’s face. “No, no, I–”

“S’kay, Coulson. I know it’s fucking gross, dude.”

Coulson just grimaces and swallows hard, like he’s tasting something unpleasant. That’s all Clint ever is - something unpalatable, more sour than acid. “I’ve never seen one that color before.”

Clint shrugs like the reminder doesn’t hurt. “My dad said I didn’t deserve a soulmate. Tried to get rid of the mark any way he could.”

Phil recoils. “He did what?”

“Said no one should be stuck with me, not even the devil himself could deserve to be paired with me.”

“Clint…”

“It’s been like this as long as I can remember, Coulson. I was over it a long time ago.”

Coulson steps closer hesitantly. “So you’ve given up on finding your partner?”

Something washes over Clint then, something he thought he’d tamped down long enough. Loneliness and bitterness and outright despair, all sharp enough to cut, too sharp for him to hide it. “Couldn’t find them even if I wanted. The mark’s too much of a mess to know what it’s even meant to be.”

“But you could ask if anyone has a mark like yours. White like that, I mean.”

“I figure this is fate’s way of telling me it’s just not meant to be. Can you imagine the poor bastard who’d get stuck with me, Coulson? They’d hate me before the first year was out. I’m no prize.” His voice wavers on the last part and he hates it, hates this conversation and Coulson and that he still can’t help but notice the way the sunlight makes Coulson’s eyes glow.

“You’re more than you think,” Phil says quietly, stepping even closer. He looks at Clint’s face like it’s a book for him to read. “You’re smart and funny and beautiful. You’re so good at your job that you’ve been given status within this organisation that no one else has ever gained. You’re kind. You work harder than anyone else I know. You’re… everything, Clint. Everything.”

“Coulson, I don’t– what are you doing?”

“When I was a boy,” Phil says, dropping a hand to rest lightly on Clint’s cheek. “I realized my mark was different.”

Clint shakes his head. He’s seen the mark on Coulson’s back in showers and too-cramped safe houses. “Your mark is exactly like all the others.”

Phil’s thumb brushes Clint’s jaw. “Not exactly,” he says, then his hands both move to the buttons of his shirt.

Clint watches as Phil slowly undoes his shirt and pulls it to the side, exposing the upper part of his chest. Clint sees freckles and a knife scar, wiry chest hair. His eyes snag on something raised and pale, and he feels like all the air’s just been punched out of him.

“Is that an arrow?” he asks, breathless and so hopeful he can hear it.

“Pointing right to my heart.”

Clint doesn’t realize he’s crying until Phil is wiping tears from his cheeks. The touch of those hands on his skin suddenly feels charged - not electric, not shocking, but warm, like a steady hum - and he surges forward with it. His lips are on Phil’s before he can even process what he’s doing. His fingers rub the bumps of Phil’s mark, of Clint’s sign on Phil’s skin, and those stars inside him, they’re turning into supernovas now.

“I can’t believe you’re mine,” Phil tells him, stuttered between desperate kisses and Clint just laughs and cries a little more too, and everything is perfect because he is kissing Phil and Phil is kissing him back.

Phil’s hand snakes its way around to Clint’s back, over that mess of skin and scars, and for the first time Clint can remember, he isn’t ashamed of it.

“I’ve always been yours,” he replies, feeling the beat of Phil’s heart echo inside his own chest. “Always.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> based on a tumblr post by superangsty. set immediately after the Battle of New York.

Clint dreams in shades of ocean. He dreams in lapping waves and devouring riptides, of crystalline azure and ink-laden navy. He drowns in dreams of Loki unpicking his mind like a lock, creeping through every crevice of the vault of secrets inside. He is surrounded all around by water and he can’t swim, he never learned how, and everything around him is wet and heavy. There are voices but they’re muffled. He sees Loki moving toward him, gold horns glowing even in the darkness of the sea, and he tries to pull in a breath to scream but there’s no air this deep.

There is a splash of cold liquid across his face and chest and he doesn’t understand, because how is he wet when he’s already underwater? He coughs and it’s air that he pulls back in, clean and sore when it hits his lungs. He twitches but his arms are being held down tight so he kicks his legs instead, colliding with something solid. His eyes are blurry but he can make out dark figures and a metal suit, then a flash of red moves right into his line of vision.

_Natasha._

Her hands cup his jaw, her nails dig into his cheeks.

There is a sharp snap of something electric right in his ear, and it’s only when he finally hears Natasha’s words that he realizes someone’s just put his hearing aids in. He swivels his head to the side and sees Bruce looking wary and exhausted.

“Loki?” he says around the million shards of glass that seem to line his throat.

“Gone,” says Tony, still in his suit of armor that’s now battered and showing silver in places.

He nods because he remembers now, remembers aliens and arrows and all-encompassing blue.

He remembers his team.

He remembers he’s just betrayed everyone who ever meant anything to him.

He looks around but he doesn’t see Phil and he can’t stop the panic that claws at him. Phil isn’t there because he can’t bear to be, because he can’t even be in the same room as Clint now.

“Phil?” he asks, and the way everyone averts their eyes tells him everything he needs to know.

“He doesn’t want to see me, does he?”

“It’s not that, Clint. It’s… Loki, he got to Phil.”

Clint imagines Phil swimming in blue and everything inside him recoils. “Where is he?”

Natasha digs her nails into his flesh. “He’s not anywhere.”

He doesn’t understand for a minute, not until he sees the twitch of anguish Natasha doesn’t try to mask.

“Phil’s dead?”

Clint had thought the world would end in gunfire and explosions, maybe through a lucky shot that caught him off-guard. He never thought his world would end in a SHIELD medical room. Everything seems to just stop. He imagines clocks pausing and planets stopping and the sun burning out.

“Tasha, tell me they’re wrong. This isn’t true, right? This is just Loki inside my head again. This is just another trick. It’s not… Phil isn’t  _gone_ , Phil can’t die. Phil’s mine. Phil’s fucking _everything_ , Phil isn’t dead. That’s like… no. He’s not dead. You’re wrong.”

Natasha lets him read the truth of it on her face, her skin warm against the ice of his.

When he screams, it feels like he’ll never stop again. He curses and shouts and tears Natasha’s arms away from him. He kicks the metal railings of the bed and rips the IV from his arm. There are hands and he bats them all away.

“You’re all fucking lying to me! You’re lying. Phil’s not dead, he’s not, he’s _not_. It’s a trick. It’s a trick, it’s okay, it’s just another lie.”

He pinches the bruised skin of his wrist hard but nothing before him even wavers.

“ _Please_ , Clint, please, I can’t lose you to this,  _mily_ ,” he hears, and he turns back to Natasha to see her eyes full of tears. It’s all wrong because Natasha never cries, and especially not in front of people.

“Phil’s dead?” he asks, grief-ridden and hoarse.

Natasha moves close to him, strokes his hair like he’s a child. “I’m so sorry, Clint.”

Nothing makes sense. Clint shakes his head. “I’m his mate. If he’s dead, I should be too.”

Natasha makes a noise, high-pitched and just wrecked sounding, and it crashes into him.

“Phil’s dead and I’m not.”

“Soulmates die as one,” Bruce says, achingly gentle and still too harsh. “If one dies, the other does too.”

Everything inside Clint is burning. “So you think Phil isn’t my soulmate?”

He looks around, looks at the pure pity on the faces surrounding him. He thinks of Phil, of Phil’s arms wrapped so tight around his body that it felt like Phil was holding him together; Phil’s lips on his; Phil’s hands on his skin, Phil’s voice in his ear. It feels like his heart is only half-beating, like only one of his lungs is breathing. Phil is his other half in every way, in every parallel universe that may exist, and nothing will make Clint believe differently.

“Phil’s mine. His mark was an arrow.”

“Coincidence,” Natasha says, almost a whisper.

“No,” Clint replies immediately, because it’s not even a thought he needs to consider. “No. Phil and me were–  _are_  soulmates. He’s it for me. He gives life meaning, makes me feel like there’s something to live for, and no one is going to tell me that it’s all just been a sham. We’re bonded.”

“Phil’s dead, Clint,” Natasha tells him, and it hurts because she’s meant to be the person who will never, ever let him down.

“You told me you would stand with me through anything,” he reminds her lowly. Her flinch doesn’t even register. “Back in Budapest, my blood flowing through your veins all that kept you alive, and you told me I’d never be alone again, Tasha. Don’t leave me alone in this, not now.”

She stares at him for what feels like forever, like she’s looking right through him in the way only she can, then turns her head toward Steve. “Find Fury. Phil’s alive.”

Clint does nothing but listen, after that. He listens to Cap shouting, to Tony belittling, to Natasha quietly furious. He listens to Fury explaining that he did what had to be done. He listens to the sound of his own heartbeat.

“Tell me where he is.”

His words are quiet, but they cut through everyone else’s as though he’d screamed them.

Fury looks at him, takes in Clint’s slumped body and vacant eyes, and something like regret flashes across his face.

“SHIELD facility upstate.”

Tony’s already making flight plans with JARVIS, but Clint doesn’t pay attention to any of it. He grabs the clothes on the chair by his hospital bed and moves to the bathroom to change into them.

When he leaves, it’s to find all of the Avengers except Thor lined up against the door.

Steve brings his hand down on Clint’s shoulder. “We’re coming with you.”

Clint checks out after that. He doesn’t come to until he’s standing next to Phil’s hospital bed. The wound on Phil’s chest is jagged and gaping, covered in white gauze.

Clint kisses his cold cheeks and smoothes back dusty hair. He presses his palm to his mark on Phil’s skin, somehow untouched by the scepter. He feels warmth flowing through Phil and into him, love coursing between them. Phil is heavily injured and recovery won’t be easy, but Clint won’t give up. He’ll never give up on this.

“Rest,” he whispers, settling in to wait in the chair by Phil’s bed. “I’ll be here when you wake up.” 


End file.
